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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (507299)	9/10/2012 12:38:22 PM
From: cnyndwllr	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793838

Re: "What COULD be helpful, however, is to carefully structure tax policy so that hiring is encouraged, not discouraged." Then you'll find this article extremely interesting. Ed "Senate Republicans Block Small-Business Tax Breaks James O'Brien, Business Writer, Recent Posts July 13, 2012 The Senate broke the stride of the Obama administration's hoped-for march toward new tax breaks for small-business owners on July 12. In what Democrats characterized as a partisan effort, the Senate, in a 53-to-44 vote, defeated a proposed 10-percent tax break in the Small Business Jobs and Tax Relief Act that would have encouraged new hires. The outcome of the final vote was largely attributed to a Republican-led filibuster. The bill needed 60 votes to survive the Senate. A Political Football Elliott Richardson, president and executive director of the nonprofit Small Business Advocacy Council (an association with 540 small-business members), says the vote is "emblematic of what goes on in Washington when it comes to small businesses." "Primarily, we're used as a political football," he adds. "You get a shot at a 10-percent tax break, and it's just a shame that political folks on both sides of the aisle can't come together and do the right thing." What Could Have Been Had it passed, the Act stood to create as many as 1 million jobs, according to Regional Economic Models, a private group that studied the measure and issued its findings earlier this week. The Act might also have added an estimated $87 billion to the Gross Domestic Product, the group's report suggested. Another tax break was defeated on July 12 as well, by a vote of 57 to 41. That bill would have let small businesses take greater deductions during 2012 on particular kinds of investments, such as new equipment. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–Nev.) told Roll Call, which covers Capital Hill news, that he assessed the filibuster to have been motivated by a Republican desire to hinder President Obama, come the November election. The Republican Version The motive for the Republican action may be also rooted, however, in the Democrats' denial earlier in the week of their counterparts' wanted amendments to the Act. Some Republicans have said that the bill might have stood a better chance if, as they asserted was not the case, Republican members had been allowed make changes to it. In another action related to small-business taxes, prior to July 12, the Senate dismissed by a 73-to-24 vote the Republican's own small-business tax-break bill after it had passed in the House last April. Democrats criticized the measure, proposed by Eric Cantor, the Republican House majority leader from Virginia, as being too greatly tilted toward the wealthy. Under the terms of Cantor's Small Business Tax Cut Act, small-business owners could have cut taxes by 20 percent on up to half the amount of their payroll. But, according to Democrats, the bill didn't push as hard for new hires in the way that Obama's measure would have. Obama's wanted Act specifically tied the 10-percent tax break to small businesses beefing up their payrolls—hiring or paying more money to existing employees." openforum.com

To: i-node who wrote (507299)	9/10/2012 1:17:58 PM
From: cnyndwllr	3 Recommendations Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 793838

i-node, I can't let the Iraq war thing go just yet. You wrote; "*And to his credit, George Bush had the guts under the most difficult circumstances imaginable to make the surge happen and win the war.*" That's misleading in terms of what actually "won" the war. ("Won" is a little farther than most of us would go). The so called "surge" was effective only because we made a hard U turn in terms of our policy towards the Sunnis. Bush/Cheney had been using our forces to quash the Sunni's resistance, basically using our troops to aid the Shiites in what was essentially a civil war. The Sunnis understood that to allow the brutal Shiites control over them was unthinkable, they weren't going to stop fighting and the Bush administration finally figured out that we can't use conventional military power to suppress an insurrection where the insurgents have the support of the general population. They had to change course. The power of the so called "surge" was that we paid the Sunnis off with arms, billions of dollars and information in return for their cooperation in what was basically a cease fire. In effect, we made them an offer they couldn't refuse. We then were, in effect, the paymaster and the arms supplier for both the Shiites and the Sunnis (and, of course, the Kurds). We could have done that at the outset but your "gutsy" Bush was too busy reveling in the tough guy power that came with commanding the most powerful military in the world, and he had no friggen idea of the limitations of the use of conventional force in a foreign country where the population wasn't providing "actionable intelligence." From the beginning he should have seen that the Sunnis were more of a potential ally than the crazy, fundamentalist Shiites. In any event, I suspect that we'll eventually see the result that Biden predicted; Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish separate entities in what was once Iraq. They've basically self partitioned even now and if they can avoid the even more bloody civil war that's been on hold I'll consider them lucky. Finally, you wrote: "I would say only that Democrats were totally spineless when it came down to it. From the Clintons to Feinstein and Rockefeller, everyone had the same intelligence, and these people supported the war right up until the time it started. I agree and you can add Biden to that list. In the aftermath of 9/11 the neocons stirred up so much fear and anger against Iraq that it would have been political suicide to swim against the tide, and, shamefully, they didn't even try. The only profile in courage throughout that entire debacle has been Chuck Hagel. Because of his principled stance his political career was ruined but he was right, he said what needed to be said and he had the courage to walk point even when no one had his back. Ed